Opinion - Marblehead Current

EVERYTHING WILL BE OKAY: Grow old along with me

22Mar

By Virginia BuckinghamNo Comments

Opinion, Views & Reviews, Virginia Buckingham

EVERYTHING WILL BE OKAY: Grow old along with me

We snore. Our eyesight is getting worse. We both gained weight during the pandemic. We walk slower. We’re easily distracted. Our joints hurt. We don’t like spending too much time alone. And, oh, do we love our afternoon naps on the couch. Our cockapoo April and I are aging together. How I wish she would continue to “grow old along with me” as the Robert Browning poem and John Lennon song entreat. I picked up April in New Hampshire during a nor’easter not unlike the one we had last week. I hadn’t committed to the breeder that I would take the last of the litter. But the minute I saw all four pounds of her, white with black spots, you would have had to muster an army to keep me from bringing her home. I held her in one hand as I signed the paperwork and she licked my face with her tiny p...

22Mar

By Mark AdamsNo Comments

Opinion, Views & Reviews

SUSTAINABLE MARBLEHEAD: Green Home Tours to showcase energy-efficient technologies

Concerns over our changing climate and rising energy bills have Marblehead residents considering changes to how they heat and power their homes. As a coastal community, many of us are worried about climate change and how that could impact us and our children. We want to do our part to fight against the potentially devastating effects that rising global temperatures might bring. To help Marbleheaders learn about home energy efficiency, Sustainable Marblehead is organizing a Green Homes Tour on April 8 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., featuring 11 houses. During the tour, Marblehead residents will have the opportunity to visit with other homeowners who have installed heat pumps, solar, insulation and other energy-efficiency technologies such as induction stoves and tankless hot water...

22Mar

By Mark HurwitzNo Comments

Opinion, Views & Reviews

’HEADERS HISTORY: Set to song, Mason’s poem soothed Civil War soldiers

Caroline Briggs Mason was born in Marblehead in 1823, the daughter of physician Dr. Calvin Briggs and Rebecca Briggs. In the 1830s, Caroline’s father sent her and her sisters to The Bradford Academy, a boarding school in Haverhill. Shortly after graduating from the Bradford Academy, all three sisters ran a private school for girls in Marblehead. Caroline Briggs Mason Poems Caroline's poem "Do They Miss Me at Home?" was set to music by composer Sidney Martin Grannis in the 1850s and became very popular with the public. Although the poem was originally written about a young girl who missed her family, soldiers fighting in the American Civil War later adopted it as they also missed their families back home. "Do They Miss Me at Home?" Do they miss me at home, do they miss me? ...

22Mar

By The Current Editorial BoardNo Comments

Current Editorials, Opinion

EDITORIAL: Woodward, Bernstein and ChatGPT

Will we see a day in the near future where a newspaper story regularly carries the byline of a chatbot rather than a human journalist? Count us among the skeptics that the kind of reporting that has brought down presidents or just the local coverage of papers like the Current about goings-on at municipal board meetings is ever going to be replaced by artificial intelligence. The dangers of generative human-like text tools like ChatGPT have been flagged in this paper and others as applied to education. Our school district is on high alert for — and indeed has seen some cases of — students using the popular chatbot to cheat on writing assignments. That and other applications will and should garner the attention of regulators. It’s also a positive sign that ahead of government interven...

22Mar

By Bob BakerNo Comments

Opinion, Views & Reviews

COLUMN: Sparks that light my fire

Just a sampling of odds and ends of shorter stuff I've been sorting through as I've been thinking about another memoir of my happy-go-very-lucky life. thoughts People ask me where I grew up. Nowhere ... yet. I'd rather be over the hill than under it. Guns don't kill people: Animals with guns kill people. Egocentric after sex: "Was it good for me?" If your horse has bad breath when you are talking to it, maybe you are at the wrong end of the horse. Success is the persistent pursuit of coincidence. A frightening thing happened to him: He had a near-life experience. Sometimes it's better to have people pushing with you than pulling for you. Winter springs, summer falls. We take with us only what we've given. Quite often, I like being apart of the group. ...

18Mar

By Superintendent John BuckeyNo Comments

Marblehead Public Schools, Opinion, Views & Reviews

SUPERINTENDENT’S UPDATE: Addressing hate in school sports — and beyond

Good people of Marblehead Public Schools: Lá Fhéile Pádraig sona daoibh! Happy St. Patrick’s Day. Last week, I shared one of the core values from our Strategic Plan for Success (PfS), personal growth. Another of our articulated core values — and arguably the most important — is student achievement. At our next School Committee meeting, I will update the committee on iReady and how we are using student achievement data to support teaching and learning and to inform instruction. Students at Glover, Brown, Village and Vets all took a fall assessment and a winter assessment in ELA and math via iReady. Students and families receive individualized score reports and analysis of the grade-level standards. They can see their growth and areas for improvement. It helps to inform...

15Mar

By Virginia BuckinghamNo Comments

Opinion, Viewpoints, Virginia Buckingham

EVERYTHING WILL BE OKAY: Positively triggered

Google being “triggered” and content is served up about the psychological effect of being returned to a traumatic experience, a terrible inheritance for those with painful pasts. I recently had two experiences, though, which made me wonder why “triggering” is only associated with pain. Google “recalling happy memories” and the results include terms like “reminisce” which doesn’t come close to capturing what it feels like to revive a happy moment in the same way triggers revive trauma. To reminisce is what you do when those old Facebook posts pop up in your feed, evoking an “Awww” or “That was a great day” or “The kids were so little” or “I was so young.” Triggering is different, it’s visceral. A sound, a smell, a comment, a backdrop actually returning you to the moment before it became...

15Mar

By Court MerriganNo Comments

Opinion

MY MARBLEHEAD FIRST TIME: Learning to shovel water

I learned about Snow Country when I lived in Japan. Westerly winds roar out of Siberia to drop as much as 100 inches of snow at a time out there in Snow Country. In places, people have entrances to their homes built into the second story so they can climb in and out over the snowdrifts. I never lived in Snow Country myself during my time working in the country. However, I did visit the region in the wintertime, including some time spent learning (poorly) to meditate in Zen Buddhist fashion in a monastery on the Sea of Japan. As snow piled up outside the temple, my “meditating mind” wondered how long it would take to shovel my car out of a Snow Country snowdrift — thoughts counterproductive to the goal of reaching enlightenment. The master stalking the prayer hall noticed my lack...

15Mar

By The Current Editorial BoardNo Comments

Current Editorials, Opinion

EDITORIAL: Clinician adds to proud history of care

The crises with mental health and substance abuse in America are well documented. For too many years, there was not enough attention focused on the scale of what is now seen as a twofold epidemic. Seeking professional help and admitting to mental health struggles would often lead to stigmatizing the very people needing help. Complicating the need for more access to professional care, we had to confront the COVID pandemic of the past three years. Fortunately, the tide is turning, and more attention is being focused on the need to provide services. Marblehead has not escaped this crisis, but it has long made mental health a priority for its citizens. For over 50 years, the Marblehead Counseling Center has existed to provide mental health and social services to our residents and to ...

15Mar

By Linda BassettNo Comments

Culture, Life Style, Local News, Opinion, Top Stories, Viewpoints

FOOD 101: Beware of the Ides of March

The “Ides of March” falls on a Wednesday this year. That’s Shakespearean slang for the 15th. If you remember your high school Latin and literature classes, Julius Caesar ignored a warning to beware of the date. He was stabbed to death by his buddy Brutus and a bunch of Senate cohorts. Caesar’s fate has nothing to do with salad. It’s just a fun excuse to tuck into a great bowl of crunchy greens laced with garlic and anchovies. To be sure you have a handle on all the exciting supplemental information, try this quiz: 1. Caesar Salad is named for: 1. Julius Caesar 2. Caesar Chavez 3. Caesar Cardini 2. Caesar salad originated in: 1. Imperial Rome 2. California’s Salinas valle...